it affords greater assurance in these difficult matters, and its evidence is more conclusive. Why, then, have you denied what it indicates, or suspended judgment, and reduced all these attributes to will, when the scriptural texts make no such distinction? Whatever argument he offers can be countered with a similar argument against his affirmation of will as something additional to the act itself.

Third: He should be told: If a Jahmī says to you, “Will means nothing but the absence of coercion, or the act itself and the command to perform it,” and claims that affirming a will entails an unacceptable consequence if it is held to be beginningless, and another if it is held to have come into being—here the Muʿtazilah fell into confusion. They do not affirm a beginningless will, since they regard a beginningless attribute as impossible; nor do they affirm that a new attribute arises in Him, since most of them regard temporal occurrences inhering in Him as impossible, despite their own inconsistencies.

They therefore split into two groups:

The Baghdad school, whose innovations concerning the divine attributes and divine decree were more extreme, denied the reality of will. Al-Jāhiz said that it means nothing but the absence of coercion. Al-Kaʿbī said that it means only the act itself when it relates to His own action, and only the command itself when it relates to His servants’ obedience.

The Basran school, including Abū ʿAlī and Abū Hāshim, said: “A will comes into being without inhering in a subject; thus there is no will.” They thereby committed themselves to something coming into being without being willed, and to an attribute subsisting without a subject,